Just recently the Barnes & Noble Simple Touch and Kobo Touch touch screen eReaders spent a brief period of time in the best-selling eReader position, and that is something that hasn’t happened since the advent of Amazon’s Kindle eReader in 2007. Anxious to keep their huge lead in market share while simultaneously announcing the arrival of their much anticipated 7 inch Kindle Fire touch screen color Android tablet, Amazon recently announced they have begun pre-selling their new touch screen 6 inch eReader for an industry low retail price for touch screen eReaders of $99. The Kindle Fire touch screen tablet is Amazon’s first effort at a Tablet PC, and pre-sells for $199.
This is Amazon’s first foray into the touch screen eReader marketplace, and they also simultaneously announced that their best-selling 6 inch Kindle 3 with special offers has been dropped to $79. The Amazon 3 with special offers is currently offered for presell on Amazon’s website, and delivery begins November 21. Amazon has a very efficient business model, and they price their hardware lower than the competition at a loss leader price and make up their profits by selling high-margin, low cost digital content. This is what has allowed them to price this touch screen eReader at substantially less than the Barnes & Noble or Kobo touch screen products.
This is the exact same Kindle 3 as previous models in all respects except that it offers the same touch screen technology that tech savvy consumers are already using on their smartphones and tablets. Multitouch gestures are supported, and this eReader is 8% lighter and 11% smaller than the Kindle 2 without surrendering any of the 6 inch screen size. It also has the ability to hold up to 3,000 books, and Kindle recently announced a library lending program that allows you to borrow books from the library without leaving your home. Support for audio books and MP3s is built in, and there is a text to speech feature as well.
Amazon claims the built-in free Wi-Fi connection allows you to download books in 60 seconds, and gives you access to over 800,000 titles from the Amazon Kindle store. There are also several thousand classical titles which exist in the public domain that you can download for free as well.
